Levi's

I was flipping through some magazines while waiting for class to start, then I came across this shoe-design contest from Levi's. Where participants were given a pair of brand new Levi's sneakers and the task to was to customize it our own way.

 

Just few days ago before I heard of this contest, a song kept playing repeatedly in my head. Its "Hollywood" by Marina and the Diamonds. I've always been a fan of her ever since I watched the music video for her song "Oh No!".

With her lovely voice kept floating in my mind, I just can't ignore it. So, I decided to draw inspiration from it. The song talks about how people around the world looked at america as some sort of a wonderful gateway to fame and fortune. And all simply because of the entertainment business are bombarding the mass media with the glitz and glamour, creating a new kind of visual culture like never before. Now, I tried to embodied that into my shoe-design.

The american flag that I drew represents the sense of patriotism in what people believed to be an 'american dream'. Because technically, what people are looking for is just a happy ending. Thus, to have the 'american' in that phrase suggest a sense of pride that people consider only in america you can get something that wonderful. On the other side, the american dream these days isn't exactly all picture-perfect. People get caught up with the idea of a perfect 'happy ending', without exactly knowing what they actually want. The TV seems to be the most influential thing in portraying that goal of ours. Some showed that the dream is to be rich, some suggested that we need to be famous. This kind of propaganda created an artificial world that we seemed to be so focused on, instead of what actually matters. That is why I applied the plastic coin embellishment to represent that other side of the american dream. 

Here is how the final product looks like,

note: only the left side that was asked to be customized

But hey, I'm not saying America is this or that. However, my point is the fact that we need to be aware of how the media is affecting our life, both positively and negatively. Considering the fast-paced age that we lived in today, sometimes we do need to take a step back and reflect.